Pacific to improve investigative reporting standards

A new online course for media professionals in the pacific region has been developed to raise the standards of investigative reporting.

The Pasifika Media Association designed the course to ensure ongoing media education for journalists and media operators in the region.

Kalafi Moala, a member of PasiMA's board, has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat the online course provides journalists and media operators with additional skills, knowledge and expertise to venture deeper into investigative reporting.

"On the job training of existing staff on investigative reporting is really key in the region," Mr Moala said.

"Journalists need to continually be updated on how to carry that out.

" A lot of pacific journalists came through the ranks as cadet reporters and some of them have not gone through official formal training at university level," he said.

Mr Moala says these journalistic skills are far more relevant to the pacific region right now than in the years before.

"When you go back into the 60s and 70s, the kind of journalism that was carried out throughout the pacific, most of them dealt with the very grassroots on reporting stories from people's lives," he said.

"Issues arose out of governance, the power structure in the village and so on.

"They needed more training, they needed to learn and to know how to investigate those things much deeper," Mr Moala said.

He says he hopes for a regional approach to training journalists in the pacific in the future.

"We would like to see mentoring and coaching done from newsrooms in the region," Mr Moala said.

"A manager can offer time for the journalists to be able to do this course online and be coached or mentored by somebody at a particular time."